Ralph Lauren Ads: Models Too Thin or Just Right?

One of my Facebook friends became a fan of "ATB Action Network Boycott of Ralph Lauren," and I wanted to see what that was all about so I checked out the group—and holy cow! Basically it's a boycott of Ralph Lauren because models were retouched to look thinner. C'mon, everybody does that these days—not that it's right in the least, it's just not unusual. So why hone in on Ralph? Then I saw the photos, and found them horrifying.

The women in the ads in question look beyond thin—they don't even look real they're so distorted. This fall, one of them, Filippa Hamilton, 5'10" and 120 pounds, claimed that she was fired for being too "fat" to fit into Ralph Lauren's sample clothing.

The company apologized after receiving lots of negative press about the distorted image saying, "We have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body."

Despite that, ads have continued to come out showing equally distorted women's bodies (men who appear in the ads seem untouched).